We are off on another adventure; only a short two months from Mexico. This time around, Tim's work is sending him for a conference. We added a couple leave days, bought me a ticket and off we are. We woke up early today, packed and set out for the airport. For the first time ever, we had a hard time with security. Tim left a bottle opener in the bottom of his bag; there was so much crap it almost looked like he had half the kitchen cutlery drawer in there. Secondly, we put all our liquids into 100ml bottles for security inspection but because they were not clearly marked they wanted to confiscate them. Tim argued with them, googled a picture and we were all set; happy he wasn't arrested.
Our flight was on time and we were very close to the front of a very comfortable Bombardier Regional Jet; sounded more like a sports car than a jet. The trip was uneventful and we arrived to Montreal in just over a couple hours. The short 90 minute wait also passed quickly and before we knew it we were board the massive Airbus A330. We had centre seats but became really happy when only one other person sat in the four block row. The trip was good as we enjoyed really good French wine and an excellent chicken with cream sauce diner.
We arrived to Brussels at about 9am; wow sleep deprived. Tim was able to get some sleep but I felt like crap. To top it off our rental was not booked properly and Budget wanted to charge us about three times the quote. Expedia rescued us and although it was not as cheap as the government booking site it was still half what they wanted to charge.
We loaded our small four door Corsa and adventured out onto the foreign European streets. After a couple minutes Tim was accustomed to the handling of the manual transmission and we were sailing to Ghent, our first destination. I was so tired that the drive was tortuous. I fell asleep quite a few times; not the best quality in a navigator. Tim followed the GPS instructions and I woke up greeted by the busy streets of this pretty mid-evil town.
It is quit apparent the streets were not designed with vehicles in mind. The are winding, narrow and paved with uneven cobblestone. Parking in the centre town was impossible, even on a relatively quite Sunday. We drove about a kilometre from the centre square area and parked in a quite park area. That's when the sky opened up and ruined our Ghent adventure.
We knew it was going to be spring rainy weather and we were prepared. The cold and wet mixed in with sleep deprivation sapped out all our will to enjoy this cute town. We walked around, visited the Gravensteen castle and ducted into a few shops. Truly an enchanting little town; very sad for the rain.
We had planned on doing a boat tour but it didn't like much fun in the cold rain!
After about an hour we decided to find a grocery store and head to our hotel. We quickly discovered a problem finding an open store on a Sunday in Ghent; NOTHING was open. Apparently most shops close at noon on Sundays. We headed to our hotel and asked the service dude for help. He was able to point us to seemly expensive little shop. Nonetheless, I had some beer which cost 1.85 Euro or about $2.70 CDN for 500ml cans, not insane especially because its good beer.
We checked into our very cute hotel room and after a hot shower and about half a beer I was passed out. We slept about two hours and Tim was ready to roll out the door; I didn’t even expect we would do anything more. We drove about 20 minutes North to Bruges. The weather was much better and we only got a little rained on.
We ducked into this mid-evil little house that Tim made up some story about it belonging to Sweeney Todd. Turned out to be a modern day mysterious meat, aka shawarma. Tim couldn't resist and order something which I fully understood what was, but he was shocked and awed by what he was presented with. There was no way we could finish it.
The church bells chimed at half past, a pleasant noise that seemed to reverberate through you while echoing in the narrow streets. After passing many mouth watering little chocolate shops, we found the centre square. Dazzled by its charm, it was not hard to imagine a bustling market here hundreds of years ago. We watched as the sun went down and the building became lit up in a array of colours; one of the most beautiful central squares, plain because it is still winter but peaceful, a space we thoroughly enjoyed.
